0 Gluten Free Review: Bisquick Gluten Free Mix

This past week some of my coworkers brought some Hardee's Biscuits and Fried Chicken in for lunch. Now, I haven't visited a Hardee's in years, partly due to gluten-free diet, but also due to my personal pledge to avoid fast food. But when I had a smell of those amazing biscuits I remembered when I was a kid and my mom would make us Bisquick biscuits and chicken for dinner.

Therefore, this weekend when I was at the store buying groceries, I decided to pick up and try the Gluten Free Bisquick mix, and share my opinion with all of you. Before delving in, I've tried a variety of other gluten free flour mixes. All I've tried before have had generally good success (aside from Bob's Red Mill All Purpose GF Flour, I'm not a fan of the taste), so I expected the Bisquick brand to be comparable.

For this test, I followed the recipe on the back of the box to make their gluten free biscuits, and substituted the call for regular milk with buttermilk. It only took about 20 minutes total to make, and surprisingly kept their shape really well.  However, I was really disappointed in the texture and dryness of the biscuits. The mix is primarily rice flour with the only other flour blend added being potato starch. I like rice flour and use it in many of my other recipes, but I believe it has to be blended with a variety of other flours. I read a few other reviews, and it seems rather unanimous that Bisquick's GF Mix is a disappointment.

Summary: Available in many mainstream stores, and relatively cheap. However, you pay for these with a grainy texture and dry baked goods. Grade: C-

Alternative Recommendation: For a relatively comparable cost and set of ingredients, but without the same grainy texture, try all purpose flour from the Gluten Free Pantry, or Jules Gluten Free All Purpose Flour. For alternative buttermilk biscuit recipes, go here.

2 Gluten Free Apple Pie Cookies

After a rather busy/difficult week at work, I decided to make some irresistible cookies that I would have no problem eating an entire plate of. Well, mission accomplished. (Served with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream exponentially increases their awesomeness BTW).

These are pretty easy cookies to make, and I was able to make an entire batch on three medium sized cookies sheets.. These are also a fun cookie to make with others, as you can have friends or kids top each cookie with apples and crumbs.

If you're search for that awesome flaky texture mixed with cinnamon apple goodness, look no further than these. If you make them, I hope you get the same kind of apple pie sensation I did!

Prep Time: 20 minutes
Bake Time:15 minutes
Makes: 2 dozen cookies

Cookie Ingredients
Dry Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup gluten free flour blend (for this one I used a store brand composed of rice flour, tapioca starch, potato starch, and guar gum)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1 tsp cinnamon
Wet Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla

"Apple Pie" Filling Ingredients
2 Pink Lady apples
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt

Topping Ingredients
2 tsp butter, room temperature
1/4 cup gluten free graham cracker crumbs
1/8 cup pecans, chopped
1 tbsp maple or white sugar

Steps
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
2. In a medium bowl, mix the dry ingredients together. In another medium bowl, whisk the butter until light and fluffy. Beat in the 1/2 c brown sugar and 1/4 c white sugar by the 1/4 cup.
3. Once the sugar and butter are combined, beat in the vanilla and the egg. Whisk in the flour by the half cup.

4. Filling: Peel and dice the apples, and place into a small bowl. Mix with the sugar, cinnamon, and salt.

5. Topping: Mix together the topping ingredients in a small bowl until it forms a crumb like texture.
6. Form the cookies: Drop the cookies onto the cookie sheets in 2 tablespoon balls, 1-2 inches apart. Push in the middle of each ball lightly, and fill with 3-4 apple pieces. Top with topping crumbles. Place in the oven and bake for 13-15 minutes until golden brown around the edges. Once cool, serve with ice cream.

16 Arugula Pine Nut Sushi Rolls

This past Christmas, my roommates and I participated in a Secret Santa gift exchange. I gave one of my roommates a sushi book by the name of vegetarian sushi by Brigid Treloar as a gift because he had wanted to learn how to make various types of sushi. This past weekend we decided to make the spinach pine nut sushi and try it out. I wanted to share some of the basics of sushi making with yall without posting the full recipe from her book. I can say that we've made various types of sushi from vegetarian sushi, and enjoyed everything made so far. I totally recommend it, as its a fairly straightforward and affordable cookbook.

Making Sushi Rice

Prep Time: 40 minutes
Estimated Cook Time: 20 minutes for 1 cup of sushi rice
Inactive Cook Time: 10 minutes

Making good sushi rice can be a fairly complex process, but with the proper knowledge can be relatively easy, albeit time consuming. On the bright side, a lot of the prep and cook time doesn't require your attention and you can do other things at the time.

Ingredients
1 cup sushi rice
1 1/8 cup water
3 tbsp rice or white vinegar
1 tbsp sugar

Steps

• Cover the sushi rice with water, and agitate. After agitation, drain the water, and repeat the process 3-4 times or until water becomes fairly clear. At first the water will become cloudy from the starches, but with each drain the water will become clearer. Rinsing out the rice in this manner removes the extra starch from the rice.
• Drain the rice, and pour cool water over the rice for about 5 minutes. Drain completely and let sit for about 20 minutes.
• Cook the rice in a rice cooker with the water.
• Spread the cooked rice over a wooden board or parchment paper. Drizzle with a mixture of vinegar and sugar, and gently keep the rice moving for about 10 minutes.

Filling Ingredients


-2 handfuls of baby arugula, blanched and diced
-1 tsp of sesame oil
-1 handful toasted pine nuts
-2 sheets nori, each cut in half

Filling steps
Mix the arugula and sesami oil.
Take a sheet of nori, and spread a thin layer of rice on the lower 2/3. Layer arugula and nuts over top.

Tightly roll the sheet from the bottom up until you reach the top. Spread water on top of the nori not covered in rice, then slice into rolls.

0 GF Almond Lemon Pound Cake with Raspberry Balsamic Sauce

Hey! I hope everyone had a good weekend! This weekend I decided to experiment with a flour that I haven't dealt with before, almond flour.

Almond flour consists of ground up blanched almonds, and is rather popular in the world of gluten free, judging from blogs and such I've searched through. One of my friends on Twitter, @GlutenFreeFinds, referred me to Elana's Pantry, a gluten free blogger who's written several cookbooks on using almond flour. In summary, almond flour is high in protein and healthy fats, and is low in carbohydrates. The major con that kept me from trying almond flour all this time is the price: its the most expensive gluten free flour I've come across, at ~$15 per pound. Yikes. But if you want to risk the cost for the taste of it, please go to Elana's Pantry to learn everything you'd want to know about almond flour. It's a fantastic resource. The one thing I've learned is that Bob's Red Mill almond flour is not the best out there. Elana mentions it on her blog, and I back her up on it, the texture while cooking comes out overly wet, and takes longer to bake. Once again, go to her blog for more suggestions on where to get the best almond flour, and for a lesser cost than $15 per pound.

Along with trying a new flour in baking gluten free desserts, I wanted to make a cake with a fresh citrus flavor to celebrate the coming of spring (I don't know about others, but I've always associated the freshness of citrus with spring). In the recipe I include how to make a raspberry balsamic sauce that I like to pair with the cake. It provides a good counterbalance to the sweetness of the cake and ice cream (if you decide to serve it with ice cream, which I wholly recommend).

Also, I would like to mention ICCK's gluten free pound cake, as this cake recipe is a variation of that one.

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Bake Time: 1-1.5 hours

Cake Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp butter, room temperature, cubed
• 1 1/2 cup sugar
• 5 eggs
• 1 tbsp vanilla extract
• zest and juice of 2 lemons
• 2 cups almond flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• Raspberry-Balsamic sauce (optional, recipe below)

Steps:
1. Preheat the oven to 325F, and grease and flour (with almond flour) the inside of a bundt pan.
2. In a medium bowl, beat the butter until fluffy. Beat the sugar in by the half cup until creamy.
3. Beat in each egg one at a time. After the last egg, beat in the vanilla and lemon zest and juice.
4. In a small bowl, mix the flour, powder, and salt. Slowly beat the flour into the wet mix by the half cup.
5. Pour the batter into the prepared bundt pan, and place in the oven for at least an hour. Once the edges brown and a toothpick comes out clean and dry, remove the cake from the oven and let it rest for 10 minutes before removing from the pan.
6. Slice and serve with ice cream (optional) and sauce (also optional, recipe follows).

Raspberry-Balsamic sauce


Ingredients:

• 4 oz of raspberries
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 tsp honey
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• zest of one lemon
• dash of pepper

Steps:
1. Preheat a small pan on low heat. Cut 3oz of the raspberries in half, and cook until berries have loosened, and become jam-like.

2. Press the jam through a fine strainer or cheesecloth to remove the seeds, and return to the pan.

3. Add all other ingredients, and increase heat to medium low. Cook the sauce for about 5 minutes. Cool and serve with the cake.

0 Favorite Recipe of March

I enjoy doing the favorite recipe poll because it gives me a good idea of what type of recipes I should try to come up with, along with what types of recipes y'all enjoy. This month the favorite was (barely) my Orange Blackberry Chicken. Thank you everyone for continuing to participate, and be sure to check the Recipe of the Month page for all of the top recipes so far! Also, I got a few comments and suggestions through the Contact Us page, and I'll be incorporating some ideas over the next month.

Here's a distribution of what your favorite recipes were:


Also, congrats to EA Stewart on randomly being picked as the one to receive the pizza crusts from The Gluten Free Bistro!

Happy weekend everyone!